Abstract

We have recently been running earthquake ground motion simulations with SW4 on the new capacity computing systems, called the Commodity Technology Systems - 1 (CTS-1) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). SW4 is a fourth order time domain finite difference code developed by LLNL and distributed by the Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics (CIG). SW4 simulates seismic wave propagation in complex three-dimensional Earth models including anelasticity and surface topography. We are modeling near-fault earthquake strong ground motions for the purposes of evaluating the response of engineered structures, such as nuclear power plants and other critical infrastructure. Engineering analysis of structures requires the inclusion of high frequencies which can cause damage, but are often difficult to include in simulations because of the need for large memory to model fine grid spacing on large domains.

@article{osti_1321435,
title = {Running SW4 On New Commodity Technology Systems (CTS-1) Platform},
author = {Rodgers, Arthur J. and Petersson, N. Anders and Pitarka, Arben and Sjogreen, Bjorn},
abstractNote = {We have recently been running earthquake ground motion simulations with SW4 on the new capacity computing systems, called the Commodity Technology Systems - 1 (CTS-1) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). SW4 is a fourth order time domain finite difference code developed by LLNL and distributed by the Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics (CIG). SW4 simulates seismic wave propagation in complex three-dimensional Earth models including anelasticity and surface topography. We are modeling near-fault earthquake strong ground motions for the purposes of evaluating the response of engineered structures, such as nuclear power plants and other critical infrastructure. Engineering analysis of structures requires the inclusion of high frequencies which can cause damage, but are often difficult to include in simulations because of the need for large memory to model fine grid spacing on large domains.},
doi = {10.2172/1321435},
journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = 2016,
month = 8
}

The Computational Plant or Cplant is a commodity-based distributed-memory supercomputer under development at Sandia National Laboratories. Distributed-memory supercomputers run many parallel programs simultaneously. Users submit their programs to a job queue. When a job is scheduled to run, it is assigned to a set of available processors. Job runtime depends not only on the number of processors but also on the particular set of processors assigned to it. Jobs should be allocated to localized clusters of processors to minimize communication costs and to avoid bandwidth contention caused by overlapping jobs. This report introduces new allocation strategies and performance metrics basedmore » on space-filling curves and one dimensional allocation strategies. These algorithms are general and simple. Preliminary simulations and Cplant experiments indicate that both space-filling curves and one-dimensional packing improve processor locality compared to the sorted free list strategy previously used on Cplant. These new allocation strategies are implemented in Release 2.0 of the Cplant System Software that was phased into the Cplant systems at Sandia by May 2002. Experimental results then demonstrated that the average number of communication hops between the processors allocated to a job strongly correlates with the job's completion time. This report also gives processor-allocation algorithms for minimizing the average number of communication hops between the assigned processors for grid architectures. The associated clustering problem is as follows: Given n points in {Re}d, find k points that minimize their average pairwise L{sub 1} distance. Exact and approximate algorithms are given for these optimization problems. One of these algorithms has been implemented on Cplant and will be included in Cplant System Software, Version 2.1, to be released. In more preliminary work, we suggest improvements to the scheduler separate from the allocator.« less

High performance computing has experienced tremendous gains in system performance over the past 20 years. Unfortunately other system capabilities, such as file I/O, have not grown commensurately. In this activity, we present the results of our tests of two leading file systems (GPFS and Lustre) on the same physical hardware. This hardware is the standard commodity storage solution in use at LLNL and, while much smaller in size, is intended to enable us to learn about differences between the two systems in terms of performance, ease of use and resilience. This work represents the first hardware consistent study of themore » two leading file systems that the authors are aware of.« less

A feasibility study of trading coal on commodity exchanges concludes that this is a reasonable possibility and recommends further detailed study. The commodities that are being traded meet the following requirements: They can be standardized; a suitable unit of trading exists or can be established; a sizeable pool of buyers and sellers exists; conditions causing uncertainty of supply and demand affect the commodity; the commodity is deliverable; and the commodity can be stored. Possible benefits to the exchange, procedures, buyers, labor, government and the public are discussed. (LTN)